Placing bets on FOOD FIGHT

If you see only one food documentary this year… that’s plenty. Really, that’s all you need, provided you remain hungry to learn more. No movie will tell you everything you need to know, but most should inspire you to investigate further. (Devour all the books you like and never gain a pound!)

Participant Media‘s FOOD, INC. takes an encyclopedic approach, cataloguing all the ills of Big Ag. THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN makes it personal, tracking the career path of America’s most unorthodox, organic champion. Chris Taylor‘s FOOD FIGHT is less combative than its title suggests, quickly itemizing the decline of our country’s dietary standards in order to focus on the “revolution” born in Berkeley and now responsible for the abundance of farmers markets in major metropolises and heirloom tomatoes on foodies’ lips.

FOOD FIGHT features omnipresent omnivore Michael Pollan, celebrity pizza-maker Wolfgang Puck and activist/restauranteur Alice Waters among a bushel of other  toque-inged heads dishing about the military industrial complex, carbohydrates and California cuisine. They all agree: post-war efforts to mass produce meals and reduce dependence on household  help increased efficiency while eliminating almost every element of taste, developing a nation of ignorant shoppers with bland palates and bulging waistlines. They all agree: locally-grown foods top corn-bloated food-like substances. And, unless, you are a self-loathing, slow-witted, fast-food-raised diabetic you simply won’t argue the benefits of reversing 4o years of Earl Butz‘s failed farm policy that favors profit over flavor, aimless fecundity over sensible food security.

On screen, FOOD FIGHT knocks out its target, Big Ag, a  tomato can if ever there was one. Sadly, in real-life the match drags on. Big Ag’s a bruising student of the sweet science, using government subsidies, savvy marketing and rigged economics to lure consumers into a tragically unhealthy rope-a-dope gambit. They grow crap cheap, sell crap cheaper, wearing us down round by round, getting into our heads with their most literal taunt: Eat shit and die. 

So, what are you going to do? Take the one-way ticket to Palookaville? Or, change your habits, change your diet and rejoin the FOOD FIGHT?